Pleistocene Park 2021 spring update

Dear Friends,

So the new year has started. It is getting slightly warmer in the Pleistocene Park. Sun is rising higher every day. Since it is -30C outside you can't call it a spring yet, but trend is definitely positive:) Animals in the park pass through the winter well. Death rate is low, and usually animals do better in the second part of the winter when it is warmer and sunnier. In any case we have proper storage of forage in case if someone will need extra attention.

Most of the park activities are happening during the summer period, but preparations for everything that will happen in the summer start earlier. And that is what keeps me busy right now. Before the new year I already told about the plans which we have for the 2021. But since the time pass, situations change, and some plans get cancelled, some new appear. Anyway I feel like detailed update is needed. Since there is a lot going on I think this post will be the longest of all:) So If you are busy and don't want to read it - short one sentence summary - more animals, new fence, new machinery, and be sure that we think very hard how to spend your money the most effective way to restorу grazing ecosystems.

Now the longer version. First will start with animals.

Goats. As I already told we are thinking of bringing a group of fur goats to the park. Those animals eat plants which other herbivores won't and we want to see how well they will do with cleaning our pastures from weeds. There is one type of goats in Russia which are bred for their fur and in the description of the specie it is said "the more severe are the conditions the better fur you get". Well it is going to be a best fur ever! Problem that there are some veterinary restrictions to take those animals from the states they are bread and before taking them to the Pleistocene Park they have to be kept in the "clean" regions of Russia. In the autumn our former Park ranger who has his own farm in the central Russia got 35 goats which he is taking care of, and in May they are supposed to travel to the Pleistocene Park. Good thing about those animals is that they are relatively cheap and cost only 75 USD per head, plus for transportation you don't need a big truck, so travel expenses are also lower. The downside of the plan, is that our former ranger farm in central Russia has no fences and according to message from him which I received this morning, my goats are roaming somewhere in the woods and surrounding village, and I have a feeling the this guy has a very blurry idea of how to catch those animals. Well, hope that he can sort it out, he still have 2 months for that. Problem that there is additional pressure to get those animals, and they are now quiet high in the priority list for import to the Park. Last year we heard that Russian government is starting a program of the "Arctic Residency". Businesses that are conducted in the Arctic and have investment programs can apply to get this residency and for that get quiet a lot of preferences from the government and substantially reduced taxes. I think that program was designed for huge exploration companies but small business can also apply. Anyway we decided to enter the program, and since I did not have a plan for profitable business, and last year I did not realize what will be my investments in 2021, I decided to apply with a "Pleistocene Goat Farm". Since those animals were the only ones I could definitely afford in 2021. Purchase and transportation of the goats with some infrastructure construction for them, was just enough for the lower limit of "investments" to join the governmental program. When we started to apply for the program it appeared to be a very complicated beaurocratic process, where we had to prepare tons of papers including a “business plan”  where I am selling milk and furJ The plan is of course a total fake, since there is no way you can make a profitable business out of fur goats in our region. Moreover I think even if you think very hard, it is not easy to design a business which will create higher loss per investment. Anyway I hoped that there will be thousands of companies applying, and in the government no one will look into my "goat farm" with big interest. However it turned out that beaurocracy to enter the program was too complicated for most of the Arctic business (I have my wife Anastasia sort all those things, and she is quiet good at it). And finally when the program was launched in our entire state of Yakutia (for your understanding it is 3 times the area of France and Germany combined) there was only 2 companies which got this status – some copper enrichment factory with 5 billion dollars investment plan and sole entrepreneur Zimov Nikita with a “Pleistocene Park goat farm” with a 15 thousand dollars investment plan. And at the Yakutian governors meeting he congratulated me with this “success”. Few days later I received a call from the local town administration, and they said that they received a request from Yakutsk asking them what kind of preferences they already provided to me. Not sure that I need any preferences from local administration, but it is very nice of them anyway.

So it will be not very good from my side if the goats will disappear in the central Russia woods. There is a very good saying “Smart people brilliantly getting out of the situations in which wise people do not appear”. Well I hope I am smart.

But jokes aside, we will sort it out one way or another and the plan is to drive animals to Seimchan by truck in May and put on a first barge down the Kolyma to Cherskii.

Bactrian Camels. These animals seem like quiet an extraordinary introduction. However in defense of this plan can say that camels did live in Yakutia in historical times, they can resist cold quiet well. They are not very good at digging through snow, but they browse, and tall willow shrub is a dominant specie in the Park, and I received few suggestions from scientists who think that it is a good idea. Camels do not like wet surfaces since they are callous-legged. But we have lots of upland landscape in the park, so they will have places to hang out in the summer. The plan is to bring those animals to the Park same time and same route as with goats. There are also some complication and permissions which we will have to sort out. But I think it is all doable. At least camels are located where they are supposed, and people who sell me them have the experience in catching/loading etc.

Note for those who doesn’t like the idea – we do not know which is the most effective way of restoring grazing ecosystems and how to convert the vegetation the quickest and most efficient way. There is a chance that camel will be a good addition, and will do the job. So it does make sense to try. In any case this animal introduction will be done solely on the research station funding and no money gathered by donations will be used.

Wisents and Prjewalski horses

About half a year ago we been contacted by a person who runs the small national park in the the mountains not far from Nice in France. He saw some documentary about Pleistocene Park and he liked the idea so much that he is proposing to give us as a gift 10 wisent (European bison) and 10 Prjewalski horses every year. Both species should make a good addition to the Park. Hopefully those 10 wisents will make good friends with an old wisent bull we have in the Park. Only problem is that when you will look at the globe where Nice is located and then will scroll to the Pleistocene Park, it will take you a while to scroll.

I have already submitted the documents to the federal veterinary service asking for the permission for animal import to Russia (hopefully it will arrive within next few weeks). Then I will start dealing with the custom brokers trying to find out everything that is needed for the import. If everything will be working out, we will be hiring the European company which transported bison for us to take them to Smolensk, which is the city in the west of Russia. There animals will clear custom and be loaded on a different truck with pre-prepared 40 feet containers and taken to the city of Archangelsk. Which is a sea port in the White sea at the Arctic Ocean. There I have already made an agreement with the shipping company which rents ships and taking goods from Archangelsk to the towns in the east of Russia, that it will take container with animals and transport it on the deck. This will substantially lower the expenses and duration of animals in transport. Route through Russia takes about 4-5 weeks, while by the sea we will arrive to the sea port located 50km from the Pleistocene Park only in 2 weeks.

I am really looking forward for the logistic route to work out. If this will proof to be a working method of animal transport we will be able to bring more animals from Europe/European part of Russia in the future for reasonable amounts of money.

The plan for the transportation is mid/late summer this year. The biggest challenge I see now is getting all the permissions. If they will be granted we will be working hard to make this trip happen.

American bison

I am considering to bring more bison from Denmark to the Pleistocene Park. Sellers are reliable, and they are willing to sell animals (even slightly cheaper than last time). Logistic been succesfull in 2019, so it should be good now. I am also thinking to get bison to Archangelsk and send by sea.

Here I am still thinking because it is not very cheap expedition and I am not sure I will have enough funds to accomplish the idea. But I will be looking into the option, since it is much desired. If for some reason the wisent/Prjewalski horses trip will be cancelled it will increase the chances of bison being transported.

Musk ox

Never ending desireJ However the plans for this year are also quiet blurry. I have two options which I consider. First one is the expedition to Wrangel island. This plan is not very certain because the head of the national reserve said that they might not have time/possibility to catch musk ox for us this year. But we will know better in May. If there will be an option we will try to make this expedition after all. Just not that late in the season.

Second option is the Yamal peninsula. We contacted the government of Yamal. It seems like they in general agree share the musk ox with us. But we should contact after mid July, then they will know how many animals they can provide. After that I will think how exactly to plan the transportation. All, not easy.

New fences

As I already previously said it is clear that we need a stronger fence, and right now we are working to create the fence by the end of the summer (when we hope we will have wisent/bison/musk ox arriving the Park). Our plan is to strengthen the 20km of the fence which we already have. For that we need to install additional 3000-4000 posts, and attach new 2.5 meter tall net. The posts are getting prepared right now. I have additionally hired 3 people for the season for the job. By the end of May all posts should be transported to the locations where they will be installed, and then over entire summer we plan to use steam machines (stoves with barrel of water on top) to make wells in the permafrost, and will be installing the poles.

Two weeks ago I paid to the manufacturer to created 20km of fence to us. In the middle of the summer we will have to buy 3 fourty feet containers, fill them with the fence and transport everything from central Russia (where the factory is located) to Archangelsk and potentially send net on the same ship as animals.

Once the net will arrive it will take just few days to attach it to the poles. Then we will have poles every 3-4 meters and two layers of net. Which in my vision should be good for no animals to escape.

Machinery

Just before the new year Pleistocene Park received quiet a big one time donation which we are supposed to use for the purchase of the machinery for the park. I have a long desire to purchase a mulcher for the Pleistocene Park. It is a self moving vehicle with a huge rotor in the front which breaks all vegetation into small particles so it decays quiet quickly. It is usually used to restore old abandoned farmlands and also maintaining the land around the electrical lines. Powerful mulchers can even break trees, but in our case I think it is not very efficient. However Park is full of huge shrubs with mostly dead biomass and also lots of tussocks which I do not know how to get rid of fast. Overall we plan animals to do the conversion for us but I am always looking for options to speed up the process. Problem with buying mulcher is that it is a very expensive piece of equipment. European manufactured ready solutions cost insane amount of money (close to half million dollars), there is some Russian produced options, but even they are not cheap and in reality really overpriced. So in the last two months I spent quiet a lot of time looking for the ways to solve the problem. Finally I bought a Russian produced forest crawling transporter, I bought mulcher (just a rotor) and both are now in the machinery shop of the person I know in Novosibirsk. Yesterday I bought engine which is used in the big soviet trucks, and also I ordered Bosch hydtraulic pump. The engine we will install in the back of the crawling transporter, we will attach hydralylic pump to it, then install rotor to the front of the transporter and connect the pump to the rotor to power it. As the final product we will have a mulcher twice more powerfull than the Russian options, but twice cheaper than what they offer on the market. Hopefully my “brilliant” engeneering idea will prove to work. And hopefully already this summer we will have some serious support in establishing the pastures in the Park. Maybe not very environmentally friendly, but hopefully efficient.

Transportation

And the most recent of my “brilliant” ideas. As I already said in the spring we will have to bring to the park container with camels, container with goats, and a crawling transporter (which is quiet bulky). And all transport company want really a lot of money for this. Just to take all this crowd to Seimchan, which is a port in the upper part of the Kolyma they want to charge me 50K USD. In this sense I came to the conclusion that “just” for 80k I could instead by two used Russian all-terrain trucks, hire two drivers, and take all my cargo without paying anyone. After the transportation I will be left with two truck which I would be able to sell (for a higher price than I purchased) or even get them a job in our region. Plus those vehicle eventually could be used for different animals transportations in the future. Plan is once again “brilliant” but there are also risks about it. Russian all-terrain trucks are not the most reliable even driving out of the factory where they been produced, and used ones in general does not increase the reliability. However good thing is that I have connections with people who are specialists in those vehicles and are well aware of the market. So in the last couple of weeks there been intensive scouting for proper trucks for a proper price in entire Siberia and Ural region. And looks like we found two options, which hopefully will make it to the Park and get animals in. Right now I am actually sitting in the train going from one Siberian town to another (I started writing this update when I was in the park couple of weeks ago). Yesterday purchased first truck. It was made in 2014 and has really low milage on it. As I understood seller had a plan to use it in the forest/lumber business, but looks like making the business all legal was to complicated to him and 3 consequent years he spent in jail. Those three years totally lowered his desire to be part of the lumber business so he is selling the truck. He also showed me his farm with 300 cows and some sheep. Great guy.

Only issue with this “brilliant” plan with the trucks is that this plan is already really over the budget, so for these trucks borrowed money from my mom in law and some businessman in Cherskii. Trucks are great, but if it will prevent me from getting bison/wisent/musk ox it is not that awesome.

Okey. Now it looks like I shared all of the plans which we have at the moment. I seriously doubt that I can handle all the plans for the year. But even if only half of them will become true it will be already a great advancement.

In the end will share some photos from the Park, and the activities which we do. Workers are taking pictures only of animals which receive extra feed, so not that big of a variety

Thanks for being part of this.

All the best

Nikita

Some yaks

Horses in the trampled snow

Willow browsed by cows

Loading of forage at the station to take to the Pleistocene Park

Road to the Pleistocene Park

Truck we bought to transport camels later in the spring

Crawling transporter to install Mulcher on.